A Clean Slate

Welcome to 2026, a brand new year! It is a tabula rasa as they say — a clean slate on which to write promises and possibilities.

There is just one problem with a clean slate: It is basically a blank sheet of paper, and that can be intimidating. Even writers have been known to sit and stare at an empty page and hope that words would magically appear, and that they would be rich, beautiful words that warmed hearts and elevated minds. Or so I’ve heard.

The reality of the new year, that blank sheet, is that if you fail to write something on it, the world will come along and write what it wants to write. Rather than allow circumstances and events to dictate (see what I did there?) the content of your days and weeks in 2026, take control and make some decisions now about how the year will read when it is looked back on as history. Here is how we can all do that, and even do it together while we are doing it individually. I’m in, and I hope you will be too. First, a little background.

Man has questions

One of the most well known events recorded in the Bible is an encounter that a man named Moses had with God, who appeared as a burning bush. I am not making this up. Although I have never seen a Halloween costume that was a burning bush, God, always original, showed up that way. The account is found starting in chapter 3 of Exodus. Here’s what happened:

Moses, now 80 (he would live to 120), was tending the sheep of his father-in-law, and on Mount Horeb (also known as Mount Sinai) he saw a bush that was burning but was not being consumed. Apparently a burning bush wasn’t uncommon, but not burning up was quite strange. So he said to himself and the sheep, “I need to take a closer look at this.”

When God saw that Moses had been stopped by the burning bush, he called out to him by name. Moses said, “Here I am.” God then told him he was standing on holy ground, so he should remove his sandals, which I assume he did. Then God told Moses, “I am the God of your father and of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Moses is now afraid to look at the bush. Smart man.

Then God gave Moses an assignment. Kind of a big job, actually — go back to Egypt and free the children of Israel from slavery — and he describes it in some detail, telling Moses broadly how it will go down. While you might think Moses would say, “No problem, Lord. I’ll get started right away,” he did not. He had questions.

God has answers

In fact Moses had several questions, and of course God had an answer for every one of them. It was quite the conversation.

Near the end of this little job interview, Moses asked his penultimate (a fun word that means next to the last) question, which was basically, “Why will they believe me?” And God, who has been as patient with me and with you as he was with Moses, answered his question with a question: What is that in your hand?

Moses said, “It is a staff,” as if God didn’t know it was a staff, and then God told him to throw it on the ground, which he did, and it turned into a snake. And then he told Moses to pick it up, and Moses did, and it became a staff again. That whole thing came in very handy later, but we’ll leave Moses there for now and focus on that question God asked him. It is the same question he has asked me, and probably you. What is that in your hand?

A keyboard

When I answer that question for myself (and for Do Good U) I can name many things. The one I use the most is a keyboard — in fact my wife bought me a new one for Christmas. As Moses used his staff for several tasks, I use my keyboard to write articles, to help create books for other authors, to write my own books, to write down curriculum, and of course for correspondence.

When I think of the keyboard not just as a tool, but as something I can use for good, my whole approach to it changes. The same is true for all the resources we have. Even the process of listing those is both humbling and encouraging. Now you give it a try. Take a few minutes to answer the question: What is that in your hand?

Whatever it is (or whatever those are), that is what goes on your clean slate, what you use as a guide for your life in 2026.

“I will use what I have in my hand to do the things I have been given to do.”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? In some ways it is and in other ways, not so much. But the beauty of this resolution is that you always know where to start. You don’t have to know where you should finish.

Maybe you are holding a very difficult time in your life that God got you through. Perhaps you are holding wisdom from decades in business. What might be in your hand is energy, or empathy, or experience, or encouragement. It could be one thing or many things. All you have to do is look, and you will know.

I have no idea how Moses thought the task of freeing the Hebrew nation was going to go, but I guarantee you it did not happen like he imagined. That is likely to be the case for you as well. You don’t have to know the end, you just have to know what is in your hand, then use whatever that is for good.

Do good in 2026! It is in you, and it is in your hand.